Tuesday 17 February 2026 5:15 am  |  Updated:  Monday 16 February 2026 1:19 pm

Privacy doesn’t matter in Silicon Valley – that’s why AI is failing

By: Lewis Z Liu

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Data privacy is as an essential component of solving “context” — the key to unlocking full-scale and safe AI adoption for both businesses and consumers, says Lewis Liu

I was hanging out with a bunch of 20-something “in the flow” Bay Area founders last week when the conversation turned to Openclaw and Moltbook.

If you haven’t been following: Openclaw is an AI agent with full autonomy over your computer, systems and files. Moltbook is a social network built exclusively for AI agents. These AIs supposedly created their own religion, porn site, philosophical manifestos and as of this week, started threatening humans. Much of this turned out to be performative theatre, but what remained captured the imagination: AI that can act rather than just chat, and AI that can coordinate and share intelligence at scale.

Hanging out with these founders, I raised the point that whilst Openclaw and Moltbook are inspiring and whilst I am building similar systems for businesses, security and privacy remain huge unsolved challenges. One of them cut me off: “Lewis, you’re so old school! Privacy doesn’t matter in Silicon Valley!”

I thought about this for a few days. It stuck........

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